


If I Seem Dangerous (Would You Be Scared?)

by Raven2547



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Genre: Gen, Kink Meme, Peter is a chamelion, Social Issues, Unbeta'd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 05:41:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2257899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raven2547/pseuds/Raven2547
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>fill for the kink meme prompt here: http: //guardian-kink.livejournal. com/1806. html?thread=146190#t146190</p>
<p>Peter Quill is an accomplished liar. He's also a very good mimic, and he changes his actions based on the social cues he receives from those he's interacting with. </p>
<p>This is the other four guardians realizing what they're dealing with, if only on top and skimming the surface, and realizing (some) of Peter Quill's talents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He shifts. He smirks. He speaks.

  
The words are different each time, and just the same its not always a smirk. Sometimes it's an honest-man's smile to win over a nice lady, or the roguish grin of an errant, innocent boy. Often, he's slouching, arms to his sides and shrugging in a 'what can ya do?' manner. Sometimes he's straight backed, rigid.   
Yondu was, in many ways, a terrible role model. He's slightly more appropriate a teacher, although still awful. Talking in and out of situations has been Peter's life for longer than he can remember. When he was fourteen, Yondu had him 'bought' at a slave auction just so they could get their alarm scramblers into the buyer's compound through his translater's earpiece mechanism. At sixteen, he was convincing a tentacled woman from Perseii 9 that no, Kraglin did not need to die because he was a very nice man and actually very interested in a relationship with her.

  
The point is that Peter is very good at playing a part. A part he doesn't always enjoy, but undoubtedly useful.

  
Shift, smirk, speak, repeat.

 

* * *

 

It's fun playing pretend. That's what he called it Before. Mom would say, "Don't let on to Grampa that Daddy is an angel, or we might get into a bit of trouble," and, like a good boy, he smiled and changed the subject if it ever came up, talking about football or the ThunderCats. He thinks about it sometimes when the charade gets hard. 'It's just pretend. It's just a game.' and he's okay again. 

Pretend to be a street rat. You don't know the strange blue man that took her jewelry, honest. Pretend to know something useful so they don't kill you, that's easy. Pretend you belong in their gang, like you've been there since day one. Pretend... to be someone's friend--that gets tricky. Because Peter's an a-hole, but he's not 100% a dick, and pretending to be a guy's friend when you know they don't have many... that's a dick move and even he knows it. 

Also, he's not good at it, but that's a side note. Peter likes people and many people like Peter (some of them even like Peter's peter, but that's different). Cybernetic animals, tree people, destroyers and assassins don't usually want friends to be fair. Not that Peter has experience with their types, but they're not something you expect to encounter.   
So, he ends up not exactly faking it. This 'friendship' thing is tender and new, because the Ravagers were more family and older brothers who beat you up and cut your hair and dress you in girls clothes and call you 'Penny' for a week. His pride is still chafed about that one. He'd been 16 when it happened. 

Anyway, friends. He's got 'em, and they've got themselves a chameleon. Except without the bug-eyes.


	2. Gamora

1\. Gamora

The Ravager's ship is dark, dank, and musty. It reminds her very much of home, except with a bit more mildew and light in the crevices. The blue man--Yondu's his name, and the phrase rings a bell somewhere in the back of her mind--has Quill up against the bulkhead in a decidedly non-sexy manner. The rest of his brutish crew, with the vulgar mouths missing teeth and unmistakably foul-smelling odors gather around to jeer and chant for the Terran's death. 

But, they don't kill him. Because he's grinning in a distinctly Ravager manner, all teeth and malice and greed. It doesn't fit the picture of him she's painted in her mind of this man who is not quite honorable, but moderately trustworthy. He stands as a twin to Yondu Udonta, huddled close and stooped next to the wall, like he's going to tell the captain a secret only they should know.

While it's clear that this Yondu knows Quill from some other point in time, and fairly well at that, he obviously isn't very good at dodging what Gamora can tell is a play. After Quill is freed, the entire crew welcomes him 'back' to their ranks with claps on the shoulder that he takes with a fiendish smile and devil-may-care atitude. 

He was reckless in the prison, but he looks almost uncomfortably comfortable, if that makes sense. Here, with these ruffians, Quill holds a sure confidence that makes him stand among them and not apart whereas he stood alone in all counts before. He's out of place but right at home, and it's strange. 

As remarkable as it is, Gamora doesn't have time to dive into the life of a stange man she's trying to escape her father with, and she won't have time until they save the galaxy together.


	3. Groot

2\. Groot

  
Groot is Groot, and everyone else was just there. Rocket wasn't just there, though, so that was wrong. And the pleasantly green woman was also not just there as Drax and the human, Quill were not. In Groot's world, there is a lot of emphasis on semantics. How you say something is oftentimes more important than what you are saying, hence the limited linguistics on his part.

  
For instance, Rocket said things in, sometimes, a downright nasty way. But what he said was always so much more. Semantics.

  
Never had Groot met another humanoid apart from his own kind that relied on semantics in such a way before Peter Quill. How this Terran communicated relied almost exclusively to how he said it. With Rocket, for instance, because most instances involving Groot involved Rocket, Quill was almost gentle if he wasn't teasing mercilessly. He looked at the cybernetic raccoon as an equal, with softly lit eyes and attentive ears--like he genuinly cared about what Rocket was saying. It was all very subtle, the way he 'talked' sometimes. Manipulation was another word, but didn't feel right when applying it to one of Groot's groot--family.

  
It paid to be observant, though. And Peter was nothing if not observant, much like Groot. He stood straight when talking to the Nova Corps and stooped when talking to his father--the blue man. He roughed around and spoke plainly to the Destroyer (another groot to the groot family) and teased and postured around to the green woman sister, Gamora. He was interesting for a humanoid; his sneaky smiles and false appearances could lure nearly all their foes into false senses of security. By all means, he was an asset.  
And he was Groot.


	4. Drax

4\. Drax

  
Nothing escapes the Destroyer's notice, just as nothing goes over his head--his reflexes are too quick for that. 'Metaphors' are hard to understand (and how you 'grasp' a concept is also not within his understanding, though the terms seem to be synonymous), but the finger-on-throat is very simple. The green wench, Gamora, uses fewer metaphors than the Terran, Peter Quill the Star-Lord, who uses even fewer than the rodent, Rocket.

When Drax first became aquainted with the first two humanoids, he was very prepared to have the bitch's thoat in his hands. This was when they first arrived at the Kyln. The tree-man and Rocket walked in with the cowering human, Quill. The Terran's face and gestures said 'fear', but his eyes roved around the room marking exits and staying on his leaders as they felled the monstrosity of an inmate. His eyes were intelligent, but if anyone were to look directly into them they changed accordingly. 

When the rodent looked at him, Quill was a ditzy youngling, not knowing his own two feet from his neighbor's. Just the same, when the tree looked at him his eyes glazed over in a gesture of kinship, shining with warmth and good humor. 

As Drax the Destroyer stared into those same eyes just before he mutilated Thanos's daughter, they were pleading. Deep pools of sky green begged him to spare her life, but also gleamed with a fiendish delight at a hinted sale and bargaining--and perhaps a fight. Behind all of these misleading thoughts, though, Drax saw what the man attempted to hide. Cunning, pride in achieving what Quill wanted, hid behind all of the fronted emotions. Perhaps not all were faux, but many were just there to move from one subject to the next.  
After he released the wench, those eyes glimmered with triumph for a literal--for when was Drax not literal--millisecond before shifting back to weighted relief. For now, he wanted the female to think he cared about her well-being, which suited the Destroyer fine, he could keep a secret.

Throughout their journey, the human spent countless seconds fine-tuning his outward appearance to enhance his effect on the populace. To the girl he was mildly intelligent and definitely interested in her; to the raccoon he was a bumbling oaf that couldn't possibly survive without Rocket; to the tree--Groot--he was a happily campaigning champion just in life for the fun of it.

To Drax he was the ultimate changeling.


	5. Rocket

5\. Rocket

To outsiders, it may look like Rocket didn't have all his screws nice and tight, but rest assured, they were some of the best welds in the galaxy. To outsiders, it may look like he's a little too involved in his own genius to realize what's going on around him. To outsiders, it may look like he's being played by a chameleon in a Terran-meat suit.

Well, he's not. That boy, Peter Quill, is a damn fool if he thinks he's got Rocket Raccoon's number. If anyone's good at playing people, it's Rocket Raccoon, and don't you forget it. That boy is full of trouble, you know, and he's not always the brightest bulb in the box, but he's got that whole 'manipulation' thing nearly down pat--if he wasn't trying it on Rocket, then he'd be perfect, but he was, so he wasn't. Quill thought that just because he said they were friends and held his hand and petted his fur sometimes while Groot was growing back that suddenly his perfectly timed questions and suitably placed comments would just go unnoticed--but they didn't!

Rocket knew what he was getting at at every moment of the day. When they were picking at Yondu over the comm-link, Peter was driving that guy through all kinds of hoops just to let something slip out about a heist or some other such info they might need. Sometimes the blue fool looked like he knew what was happening and did nothing to stop it, but other times Rocket could almost swear Quill was playing him like he played his mixtapes on the Milano's sound system. At this instance it could easily be played off as a child knowing their parent's weaknesses, but that's not where it stopped. 

Nova Corps, Ronan, Knowhere miners, inmates; the list went on and on. The different facades Peter wore throughout their misadventures were insurmountable, the sheer number a little mind boggling. 

One thing Rocket could not understand was how someone went through life living in so many different skins. To him, even just this one was ill fitting and uncomfortable. To be trying on a different face every day, sometimes every hour if need be, just sounded exhausting. Never being yourself, always following a means to an end--but where was the end for Quil--Peter? Did it ever stop? In the privacy of his bunk, Rocket thought to himself that maybe he wasn't so perfectly good at reading the chameleon's faces. Maybe Quill even wore one with them, in front of Rocket and Groot, Gamora and Drax.

Rocket wore a bandit's mask wherever he went, but it was etched into his fur by his biology. Peter intentionally put on one of his own--but did he ever take it off?

**Author's Note:**

> I feel bad for not filling the prompt exactly, if you continued to read on. I didn't get to make Quill get recognition in a larger way, more insightful from his teammates. I very much wanted to fill this prompt, and though it took a little while, I'm relatively pleased with what came out. I hope the OP enjoys it as well as anyone else who reads. Much of this was written at a very late hour of the night, and all mistakes are mine.


End file.
